"I don’t know how many billionaires sit on the board of trustees, arguably the most prestigious and desirable in Manhattan, but I am comfortable going with the adjective 'plenty.' Time to start writing lots more checks, or time to step aside." (UPDATED)

Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Christopher Knight weighs in on the "bombshell that New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art dropped into the news cycle the other day." "I don’t know about you," he writes, "but I am sick to death of reading about art museums and their scandalous schemes for stress-free fundraising by throwing principles to the winds and selling art from their collections to pay for programs, staffing and other operational costs, pandemic induced or not." He notes that "in the last 10 months, museums in Long Beach, Palm Springs, Baltimore, New York’s Syracuse, Brooklyn and now Manhattan have been behaving badly."

Confronted with all this naughtiness, "two words immediately popped into [his] head: Patriot Act."

To show how little has changed in this debate, here is my exchange with Knight from back in 2009. And here is an exchange he had with Brandeis philosophy professor Jerry Samet around the same time. More recently, the Deaccessioning Hall of Fame Scholar-in-Residence, and others, had some thoughts in response to Knight's views on the Syracuse-based "bad behavior" here.

UPDATE: Tyler Green seconds Knight's motion: "NYC has 113 billionaires. Many are on the Met's board. The wealth of billionaires increased $1.1T during the first ten months of the pandemic. It's on their fat asses."

A rumble of dissent (UPDATED)

The Art Newspaper article I linked to in the update to the last post ("Rumbles of dissent") includes the following quote from Martin Gammon, author of Deaccessioning and its Discontents: A Critical History:

"The Met, like every other major encyclopeadic museum, deaccessions all the time, and there is nothing wrong in principle with extending that practice to support the direct care of collections in the current two-year window."

I take that to be a pretty standard view. There is nothing wrong -- in principle -- with extending that practice (i.e., the practice of routine deaccessioning) to support the direct care of collections.

So if we take the form of the sentence -- "There is nothing wrong, in principle, with extending the practice to _________________" -- we know there are at least two ways to fill in the blank that most people think are acceptable: to buy more work, and to support the direct care of the collection.

The question I've been asking (and asking) is: why can't there be a third? Why can't we say there is nothing wrong, in principle, with extending the practice to, for example, keep a failing institution from having to shut its doors? What are the arguments against filling in the blank in that way that don't also apply to filling in the blank with "to support direct care of the collection"? Why is supporting the direct care of the collection a more valuable thing than keeping from going bankrupt? Once you say the practice is okay for reasons A and B, why can't it also be okay for reason C? We have to look closely at reason C, and ask whether, in the particular case in front of us, it's worth selling work to support it. But in principle why should we rule out the possibility completely?

UPDATE: Deaccessioning Hall of Fame Scholar-in-Residence Brian Frye is with me: "What is the 'principle' that prohibits deaccessioning for an otherwise good purpose? There isn't one, which is why the deaccessioning police only ever raise their voices when challenged. What is the correct 'principle' for deaccessioning? Museums should deaccession works whenever the museum thinks it's the right choice. If you disagree, take it up with the board members, who are ultimately responsible. If they violate their duties, replace them."

I agree. The "principle" is that in each case we ought to "weigh the actual costs and actual benefits and try to determine whether, on balance, all things considered, the sale is a good idea."

"As Museums Push to Sell Art, Competing Ideas About Deaccessioning Are Playing Out in Public" (UPDATED)

In ARTnews, Andrew Russeth has a long, balanced piece on the state of the deaccessioning debate, with lots of good quotes, including:

• Baltimore's Christopher Bedford: "What we are doing is not for everyone, including the Christopher Knights of the world. There is a pressing, pressing, pressing need for change within institutions in this country, because we have been failing in our mission of providing the right kind of service."
• On the argument that museum board members should just step up and provide the needed funds, Brooklyn's Anne Pasternak: "We’re public institutions. Why is it that a handful of people are expected to carry the burden of a public institution that they didn’t create?"
• On the same question, the Everson's Elizabeth Dunbar: "We don’t have a huge collecting base here, nor do we have billionaire trustees on our board."
• Mark Gold: "What’s unethical about using the proceeds from one painting to pay people fairly, or to address social injustice?"
• Michael O'Hare: "Museums are a public good. We give them special financial privileges and tax-free buildings and whatnot. And their job is to maximize engagement with art and optimize engagement with art.” (Russeth summarizes O'Hare's position as follows: "reverse FASB’s position and make the AAMD’s changes permanent. Force museums to value their art on their balance sheets, then ask them tough questions about what they show, what sits in storage, and what they could sell—perhaps with a preference for other museums—to hire more employees, pay them better, and promote better engagement with art.")
• Russeth then asks: "Wouldn’t [O'Hare's] course of action push donors and government funding away from supporting museums?" O'Hare's answer: "If the only way by which you can make a claim on people’s wealth and the taxpayer is by lying, then sure. If a rich person asked me about art philanthropy, I would say, Go down the street, walk past the museum to the symphony or chamber-music-presenting organization and give them money—until things change."
• Christopher Knight calls O’Hare’s ideas "ridiculous" and suggests we "stop thinking like Ronald Reagan. Stop thinking that trickle-down works. It’s a mindset that says the market is the answer to all our problems. And it is not."

UPDATE:  Rumbles of dissent.

More Met

My friend Mark Gold, an experienced observer (and occasional participant) in the Deaccessioning Wars, emails regarding the news about the Met:

“It really feels like the dam has broken.

“To me, the most important sentence was the first line of the NYTimes article:  Facing a potential shortfall of $150 million because of the pandemic, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has begun conversations with auction houses and its curators about selling some artworks to help pay for care of the collection.  [Emphasis added.]

“Later, reference was made to the board's plan to revise the Met's collections care policy.

“I've always believed that expanding the definition of direct care was the way forward for museum's dealing with budget issues, more than the inevitable expansion of the AAMD rule.  The significance of the freedom given each individual museum in the AAMD statement to define direct care for itself clears the way to deploy the proceeds of deaccessioning in a much more expansive and powerful way. Doing so frees revenue from other sources to be spent for expenses that are not within care of collections.  At a minimum, it may constitute a museum survival kit.  But it can also become a budgetary philosophy that results in not just the reallocation of expenses amongst various categories, but an increase in revenues to support important initiatives like collections diversity, fair pay, etc.”

This also is a good time to mention that Mark and I – along with additional friends of the blog Brian Frye and Nicholas O’Donnell – will be on a panel together next month as part of a Syracuse University symposium entitled Deaccessioning After 2020. Details here.

"Like many institutions, the Met is looking to take advantage of a two-year window in which the Association of Art Museum Directors ... has relaxed the guidelines that govern how proceeds from sales of works in a collection (known as deaccessioning) can be directed." (UPDATED 3X)

The Met floats a trial balloon: Facing Deficit, Met Considers Selling Art to Help Pay the Bills. It's considering. It has "begun conversations." It would be "inappropriate" not to consider it, "when we’re still in this foggy situation." They are "engaging in [an] evaluation process" that is "the more conscientious course of action." "Every museum in the U.S. is having these conversations." For them "not to discuss this now would be irresponsible."

They would also like us to know that, if it happens (which it might not, it's only being considered, mind you) it will be done carefully. "As museums periodically do routinely, the Met’s curators will evaluate the holdings in their departments with an eye to which pieces are duplicative or have been supplanted by better examples, or have rarely — if ever — been shown. Works to be sold will then have to be approved by department heads, the museum’s director and the board before public auction."

Also, anticipating one of the main lines of attack from the Deaccession Police (i.e., however legitimate the need, the money should be raised by other means), the story includes the following from a Met curator: "We’re facing a huge budget deficit. We’ve tried for years to get more robust funding for conservation."

So the idea has been floated. The "conversation" has begun. Over to you, Deaccession Police.

UPDATE: Paddy Johnson: "The Association of Museum Directors should have disqualified museums with endowments over a certain size from deaccessioning work. The Met does not need to do this."

Greg Allen: "The Met rolls out its deaccession plan in an exclusive to the Times. Meanwhile no comments from the trustees with the billions to fund the budget gap who will vote on selling artwork instead."

UPDATE 2: Brian Frye: "This is big news. If the Met starts deaccessioning in order to generate operating revenue, it's game over for the deaccessioning police. I'll eat my hat if they don't go bananas."

UPDATE 3: They're going bananas. No hats need be eaten.

"Last night I watched 'The Art of the Steal,' a 2009 documentary about the Barnes Foundation. It’s an Impressionist museum that moved from Merion, Pennsylvania about 5 miles to central Philadelphia. According to the movie, the Barnes was pillaged." (UPDATED)

Kriston Capps watches The Art of the Steal and concludes: "THIS DOC IS INSANE."

I could have told him that a decade ago.

As he says, the bottom line is the Barnes remains:

—Open

—Not ruined

—With all the paintings exactly the way weirdo Barnes hung them

—In a replica of the original rooms

—Only moved 5 miles

—Where millions of people can visit.

Yeah, a real tragedy.

Remember that the usual suspects were deeply opposed to the five-mile move, including Christopher Knight (who appears in the INSANE DOC and who says "we're used to hearing about corporate takeovers with for-profit corporations. But this was a nonprofit corporate takeover") and Lee Rosenbaum (who wrote an op-ed in the Times under the headline "Destroying the Museum to Save It").

UPDATE: Brian Frye: "The deaccessioning police have always been the gift that keeps on giving. Amusingly, 10 years later, they still haven't ginned up any remotely coherent arguments."

"Among the latest cases are a sculpture that used cheese as a medium to mock former President Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall, a mural called a symbol of San Francisco’s LGBTQ community, and a work highlighting Vermont’s role in the Underground Railroad."

Bloomberg Law: "Between October—when the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a $6.75 million judgment against a developer for violating VARA—and December 2020, artists filed at least a half dozen VARA claims, four of them over the destruction or removal of public art."

Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento says: "As the cliche goes, careful what you wish for. More law only means more regulation and, moreover, an increased reliance on a structure that may be betting against you."

Tania Bruguera Arrested Again in Cuba

 Story here. It's not the first time.

The painting that's been stolen three times

 Graham Bowley has the details.

When they say held in the public trust in San Francisco, they really mean it (UPDATED)

KQED: Diego Rivera Mural at SFAI to Receive Landmark Designation, Preventing Possible Sale.

Background here.

UPDATE: New York Times story here.

Good summary of the new copyright small claims court law

From David Steiner here.

"The Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, which last year controversially sold off a prized Jackson Pollock drip painting to shore up funds to diversify its holdings, has announced the first new slate of artworks to enter its collection."

They include works by ceramicist Sharif Bey, multimedia artist Ellen Blalock, and painters Dawn Williams Boyd and Ellen Lesperance. The museum's director says "these works, in particular, speak directly to some of the most pressing issues of our time, including the perpetuation of racist ideologies and violence against people of color, the global impact of climate change, and systemic inequities related to race and gender, among others."

As artnet news notes, the art critic Christopher Knight described the Pollock sale as “inexcusable,” arguing that the museum was “betraying its legacy” by “privatizing” a remarkable and historic painting. See also here and here.

"France's highest court orders retrial of art-dealing Wildenstein family"

 Story here. Background here,

Pop quiz: Is this repulsive? (UPDATED)

The New York Times had an article yesterday headlined "San Francisco’s Top Art School Says Future Hinges on a Diego Rivera Mural."

Apparently, the San Francisco Art Institute "was close to losing its campus and art collection to a public sale last fall, when the University of California Board of Regents stepped in to buy its $19.7 million of debt from a private bank, in an attempt to save the 150-year-old institution from collapse," but, despite that, "years of costly expansions and declining enrollment at the institute have put it in peril, a situation that has worsened during the pandemic."

As a result, the institute is considering a sale of "a mural worth $50 million by Diego Rivera that officials say could help balance the budget." According to the Times, "the school has stressed that no final decision has been made to sell the mural. But behind the scenes, administrators and the institute's leaders are strongly pushing to do so, as it would pay off debts and allow them to make ends meet for an annual operating budget that typically runs around $19 million. (The board chairwoman, Pam Rorke Levy, disputed that, saying, 'Our first choice would be to endow the mural in place, attracting patrons or a partner institution that would create a substantial fund that would enable us to preserve, protect and present the mural to the public.')"

My question is: if they do decide that the only way to remain viable is to sell the mural ... would that be repulsive? Would it be unethical?

Would it change your answer if the buyer was "the filmmaker George Lucas [who] was interested in buying the mural for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles," thus satisfying the Ellis Rule?

The Deaccession Police will say the institute should just go shake the Magic Money Tree, but if you read the article you'll see that's not so easy.

UPDATE: SFAI MFA graduate (and conceptual law professor and Deaccessioning Hall of Fame Scholar-in-Residence) Brian Frye tweets: "I think the obvious answer is that the school should absolutely sell the mural. But it should also focus on reforming its board & management. Their incompetence is truly shocking."

"When the Crystal Bridges Museum bought this piece, they bought something that the law does not recognize. It is owning nothingness."

Guy Rub discusses his law review article Owning Nothingness: Between the Legal and the Social Norms of the Art World.

"The provisions tightening scrutiny of the antiquities market were contained within the sprawling National Defense Authorization Act, which Mr. Trump vetoed last week and which the House and Senate voted to override"

The New York Times:  Congress Poised to Apply Banking Regulations to Antiquities Market.

Nutshell summary: "Exactly how the new law works will be determined over the next year by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau within the Treasury Department, in consultation with the private sector, law enforcement and the public. Legal experts expect that the new antiquities regulations will be similar to others governing the precious metal and jewelry industries, where certain transactions are flagged to the authorities, who then determine whether they are suspicious. The law also seeks to end the use of shell companies to conceal the identities of buyers and sellers."

The usual good analysis from Nicholas O'Donnell here. (Nutshell summary: "Short version? It does less than it seems and probably isn't worth the cost, but it's a sign that change is coming and the market needs to get involved.")

"One of the few silver linings to emerge from the pandemic was the announcement, back in April, that the American Alliance of Museum Directors had relaxed its guidelines on deaccessioning. For now, museums can sell works to pay for operating expenses. Few have followed through, however—perhaps because art-world pundits, once again, responded with conservative alarm."

I just came across this piece by Nikki Columbus in n+1, which includes the following on the BMA deaccessioning controversy:

"The latest scandale du jour is the Baltimore Museum of Art’s deaccession plans. While legitimate questions have been raised about the upcoming sale of three paintings, the castigation is redolent with racial privilege. In a particularly ghoulish piece of commentary ('As night follows day, natural disasters bring out the scammers ready to exploit public confusion and fear'), the Los Angeles Times’s Christopher Knight recently complained about 'mission-driven' deaccessions—i.e., selling works to finance increased equity and diversity for both museum employees and audiences, by raising salaries, restructuring staffing, offering free admission, and expanding museum hours. Yet the alternative is ensuring that the office and the visitors remain white, while security and maintenance stay Black and brown. It is effectively an argument for maintaining white supremacy at museums."

"How ‘deaccession’ became the museum buzzword of 2020"

LA Times: "For the art world, 2020 was the year that the Black Lives Matter movement spurred a deeper conversation about inclusion and equity, ultimately leading some museums to sell off works by certain artists — usually white, often male — ostensibly to diversify their permanent collections."

"On Friday, Sotheby’s filed a 27-page memo in New York State Supreme Court asking a judge to dismiss the case."

Eileen Kinsella at artnet news: Sotheby’s Pushes to Dismiss the New York Attorney General’s Lawsuit Over Its Alleged Role in Helping a Collector Evade Taxes. Background here.

"It cannot be seriously disputed that the COVID-19 pandemic is a natural disaster. One need look no further than the common meaning of the words natural disaster."

Phillips has prevailed in the force majeure lawsuit brought against it by Joe Nahmad, mentioned earlier here.